Watch a lot of Talks

Watch a lot of talks#

Speaking and CFPs and the world of conferences have their own special language, and like any language, you learn best by immersion.

My YouTube Watch List is 400+ videos long. When I have lunch or am bored, I pull up a video and watch a talk. Most conferences directly copy and paste titles and talk abstracts into the videos. Start paying attention to those since you’re about to start writing them. Watching talks also trains the YouTube algorithm to start recommending them rather than entertainment, which is a nice nudge when I procrastinate.

You can find lists of more great talks on Hacker News.

Speak at a meetup#

If you haven’t spoken at a meetup yet, I strongly recommend you do so a couple of times before you speak at a conference. This is the best chance to get your speaking nerves out of the way, iron out the presentation technologies you want to use, and try your content on people who aren’t your dog. On the flip side, meetup organizers are always looking for speakers, so you will be doing them a favor.

Some meetup organizers like GitNation actively use meetups to seed future conference speakers, so you may even get noticed for a conference based on a meetup talk you give.